They Came From Beyond, Sexy and Media Savvy

Center front, Elizabeth Mitchell and Logan Huffman in "V," ABC’s
remake of an ’80s series about alien encounters and mass delusion.Credit
David Gray/ABC

A crowd gathers to gawk at a huge spaceship that has appeared in the sky over Manhattan. The bottom of the ship turns into a screen (à la “Blade Runner”) showing the leader of the alien visitors. She announces that they mean us no harm, that they just need some water and a mineral “common and abundant on Earth” before they shove off.

The assembled New Yorkers digest this, look at one another — and start to applaud. That’s an early scene in “V,” the new science-fiction series beginning on Tuesday on ABC, and the only logical reaction to it is: on what planet does that happen? Certainly not ours, where a more natural reaction would be “Who does she think she’s kidding?” or words to that effect.

Applause makes sense on Planet Television, where the producers of “V” — working with the premise that only an underground network of rebel humans suspects the visitors’ true intentions — need the aliens to win over the rest of humanity before the third commercial break.

It’s a small point, but it’s indicative of a larger problem. The ideas in “V,” about alien encounters and mass delusion and media manipulation, are enticing. It’s too bad that they’re floating around in a show that at this early stage, is so slapdash and formulaic in its storytelling.

The premiere doesn’t explore how the world might react to the appearance of alien ships (and to the fact that the visitors look like early-21st-century television starlets) beyond a few broad strokes: church attendance skyrockets, and young people flock to become alien-sponsored “peace ambassadors.” Most of the episode’s time is spent introducing the small and hackneyed band of humans who will, however implausibly, be the key players in the coming battle.

Photo

Morena Baccarin, center, as the alien leader, Anna, with her entourage in “V,” a series on ABC.Credit
David Gray/ABC

They’re portrayed by some appealing actors, including Elizabeth Mitchell, reprising her stoic-yet-feisty persona from “Lost” (that other, better high-concept show on ABC). Here she plays a laudably suspicious F.B.I. agent. Scott Wolf, as an ambitious television reporter, once again demonstrates his talent for smarm.

The most talked-about performance will be that of Morena Baccarin (the courtesan Inara on “Firefly”) as the highly attractive alien leader, Anna. (No, no one asks why an alien who had never encountered humans before would be named Anna.)

“V” is, to use the term currently in vogue, a reimagining of the 1980s show of the same title. The comparison to the recently ended “Battlestar Galactica,” another slicked-up 21st-century version of a hokey post-“Star Wars” space opera, is inevitable and unflattering. “Galactica” could be a grind, but it had complex characters who made surprising (yet believable) choices.

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A closer analogue would be the USA Network series “The 4400” (2004-7), one of whose creators, Scott Peters, is an executive producer of “V.” It, too, treated big ideas in a cramped, underwritten style, content to fall back on prime-time formulas to get from one set piece to another. In “V,” as the most astounding event in human history is unfolding largely off screen, we watch a mother racing across town to find her son; a man buying an engagement ring; detectives squabbling; a priest (Joel Gretsch of “The 4400”) having a crisis of faith. We could just as well be watching a show about a hurricane or a serial killer.

In the absence of compelling drama, the show tries to provide topicality. The aliens’ promise to share their medical technology with the human race leads to a jarring reference to “universal health care.” Aliens are embedded among us in sleeper cells. An opening title sequence asks: “Where were you when J. F. K. was assassinated? Where were you on 9/11?” As earthshaking as those events were, do they really stack up against the arrival of aliens in enormous hovering spacecraft?

The producers of “V” don’t have a whole lot of time to make their execution match their premise: in an odd programming decision, ABC is showing only four episodes before the series goes on hiatus until the spring or later. If things don’t improve, it could be much later.

A version of this review appears in print on November 3, 2009, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: They Came From Beyond, Sexy and Media Savvy. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe